The magic of the Blade Runner

LONDON — Just when it simply could not get more beautiful— the lovely Olympic Stadium here filled to its 80,000 sold-out brim firstthing in the morn and roaring insanely already; the sun making guestappearances in the leaden sky in that teasing English manner; the Olympic torchminding its business and quietly burning off in a corner; the femaleheptathletes stretching improbably long legs this way and that on the infield,the whole bloody place about to bust out of its skin — well, into view cameOscar Pistorius.

It got more beautiful.

For all that has been written about the young man calledthe Blade Runner, no one has said the obvious: He is magic, lit from within.

Think those carbon-fibre Ossur Flex-Foot Cheetah brandlegs, which have carried him into the semifinal of the 400 metres Sunday, arethe most remarkable part of his anatomy?

Feh. You’ve not caught a glimpse of that big heart then,those impeccable, almost ridiculous manners (no one ever thanks the dogs of thepress, and properly so, but he did, repeatedly), the generosity of spirit thatseems to envelop him and infect everyone in his zone.

“Aah, you sexy beauty!” a man cried from the lower deckas Pistorius did his warm-up on those crazy-ass legs.

He heard the man and waved. He was grinning like a madmanat the start. He could not have been looser. It was only the most importantrace of his young life, not to mention the one that will get him in the historybooks as the first double-amputee to compete in the Olympics, but he wassucking it all in.

“I felt good today,” he said later, laughing withdelight.

He mentioned the guy who called him a sexy beauty. “And Iwas like thanks … it’s just, so many people are out there today just to enjoythe sport, and that’s what we [athletes] must remember.

“We work so hard every day and we’re so serious every dayabout what we do that it’s moments like this you have to just take a step backand go like wow ...” he said. “That’s why we’re here, that’s why we want to dowell. And it shouldn’t be a burden: nobody’s making you line up here.”

It was a good point. The way some folks carry on, youmight think the conscription of athletes was a real problem instead of oneconfined to China and a handful of repressive regimes.

He finished second in his heat with a season’s best time,and in the stretch, seeing no one was going to catch him, he noticeably let up.Of 47 men who ran the race in seven heats, Pistorius was the 16th fastest of 24qualifiers.

All the others had regular-issue legs.

He thought of his late mum, Sheila, who died 10 yearsago, when he was just a teenager, two years before he made his internationaldebut in Athens at the Paralympics, as he put it, “a 17-year-old with curlyhair and braces” and not much of a clue.

“My mother was such a big part of my life,” he said. “Andmy grandmother’s out there today [in the stands, with his father Henke]. Myfamily’s just a huge source of support. I thought about my mummy a lot today.She was kind of a bit of a hard core, she wouldn’t take no for an answer … Shealways said losers aren’t the person that gets involved and comes last, butit’s the person who doesn’t get involved.”

She told her kids, “’You start something, you do itproperly. You finish.’ I’ve always looked at that with my training. I guessthat’s what makes me a good athlete. I love training, I love working hardtowards something.”

And he said, “You want to be here, you want to beexcited, so it’s just the most amazing experience. Even now, when I hear thecrowd shout, even if it’s for a long jump, you just can’t help but smile. Thankyou to everyone who’s come out to support today.”

He’s not a freak, but an athlete who was born withoutfibulas and had his legs amputated below the knee before he was even a yearold. He grew up thinking he was normal, played sports competitively, always knowinghe had far more in common with his mates than the other way around.

Just like them, he wanted to compete at the highest levelthere was, go as far as he could with the talent he had, and after conqueringthe Paralympics (he will compete again in them here in London), the Olympicswere the logical goal.

“I’ve always said, from three weeks ago when I heard Imade the team, that it’s one thing being here and it’s another performing andthat for me is a task that I take seriously,” he said. “I want to represent mycountry well. My goal was to make the semifinal, and that was going to be atough goal for me. My times were off the top guys’. I had to run a very hardrace …”

He is recognized, of course, as a natural source ofinspiration for the disabled.

As one reporter put it, relentlessly, to other 400-metrerunners as one by one they rolled through the mixed zone past the throng ofreporters waiting for Pistorius, “Can you imagine being a little boy of eight,with no feet, and not being able to run?”

Feh, again: There are stories like that everywhere,little boys and girls who have bad luck or bad parents or bad genes and whorise to it every day.

Consider the answer he got from Bryshon Nellum, who as ithappens was the 10th fastest qualifier.

“Well,” he said, “it’s crazy, because I have my two legsbut there was once upon a time where I really didn’t have them, and to not havethem is one of the worst things ever and to have them is like, you can’t takethese things for granted.”

Nellum was referring to the fact that on Halloween nightin 2008, as he was heading to his car near the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, hewas struck in both legs by a shotgun blast. He’d been mistaken by gangbangersfor someone else. He had a bullet in each thigh and one in a hamstring anddoctors told him he’d walk, but never run again.

Within a month, Nellum went from wheelchair to a bootcontraption to crutches, from wheeling to walking to jogging to running.

“That’s why I say I can kind of relate to him, but at thesame time, I have my legs, so, it’s kind of a little different. A lot of peoplewhen they don’t have legs they don’t really, they give up. They don’t continueto work to reach their dream. And this guy here, he’s doing that,” Nellum said.

Pistorius is South Africa’s Terry Fox, who ran a marathona day for months on one leg, hip-hop, as he tried to run across Canada, orMaster Corporal Jody Mitic, the Canadian sniper who lost both legs when hestepped on a landmine in Afghanistan, then became an advocate for wounded soldiers(oh, and ran two half-marathons for charity). They are inspirational figures,not for wee boys with no feet, but for the human family.

Kirani James of Grenada, who won the heat after Sheila’sson ran his, put it best.

“What’s important,” he said of Pistorius, “is that he’s agood person. That trumps everything else.” Doesn’t it just.

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